An Unlikely Salute

Stereotypically, one might think of George Will and Michele Bachmann as inhabiting opposite poles of the conservative movement. But Will has a nice column on Michele in tomorrow’s Washington Post. He tells the story of how she got into politics:

The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.

Michele won that first race with the help of an activist group of which I am a member called the Freedom Club. She’s never lost a race since. Probably the most upbeat and energetic person I know, Michele is a great retail politician, a fact that has repeatedly frustrated the Democrats as they have spent ever-increasing amounts of special interest money to try to drive her out of politics.
Michele, like us, is a former liberal who saw the light. Democrats try to typecast her as a social conservative, but her overarching theme has always been freedom. A former tax litigator, she is as shrewd a critic of the Left’s would-be takeover of the economy as we have in the conservative movement.
A week or so ago, she made a one-time appeal for small donations on the web and raised almost $100,000 in a day. The site is still open and we’d encourage you to contribute. The Democrats will pour vast resources into her district in 2010 as she is at the top of their list of effective conservatives whom they want to drive out of Congress.